Little victories

As I had commented previously, the Portuguese system cares a lot about where you live. So, in one of the steps to formalize my residence in Portugal, the other day I went to register my address (and to obtain an associated certificate) to the Junta de Freguesia of my neighborhood. The Junta is, roughly speaking, the local administrative unit at that each neighborhood. I went there at 9.15, as I had seen online that it opens at 9am. To my surprise, the Junta was closed when I got there. I waited for a few moments, but as bad for waiting indefinitely as I am, I gave up and started walking back home. I had walked away for a few meters when someone else wishing to enter appeared. She worked there, and we were able to enter together.

The building in which the Junta is located is simply beautiful, full of impressive azulejos, and very well preserved overall. Once inside, it was easy to find the office where I should get my certificate. There was a lady, somewhere between 40 and 50, who had just arrived (it was 9.30 already, and the thing is supposed to open at 9am, but anyway). I tried to ask her about the thing I needed, but she replied rudely saying that she needed some time to fix things there before. She certainly took her time, and at the end she put on one of those "waist bags" one usually wears for travelling. The bag was full of keys and two cell phones. She was clearly the one in charge of that office.

Once I got her attention, she was unconvinced about my case, as she needed a proof of residence (yes, exactly the thing I needed from her!) and I only had a leasing contract of my room, in English. She didn't accept the contract, so things were in a dead end for a second. Luckily, I had a document from my bank with my address and that worked just fine. (Indeed, the circularity was broken at the bank, as they had accepted the contract in English.) The problem with the document of the bank is that the gorgeous blond woman there wrote my address incorrectly, so the document had an incorrect address. Stupid blond. Somehow I managed to explain this to the lady at the Junta office, and she didn't complain. Lucky me.

Then it was a matter of the lady making copies of my passport and other documents, and me filling in some form. Easy. The problem is that she received a personal call on one of her two mobiles and so the copies took like 10 minutes. I realized the level of competence of the lady when she asked me about my nationality: she had taken many copies of the passport and yet she was unable to infer my nationality. By then, she was already kind. She checked the form I had filled in, and found the names of my parents very funny to read. I had forgotten to fill the field "marital status". She looked at me in the eyes for some long seconds and replied jokingly "definitely single!". She surely thought I am too young and handsome to be married :)

At the end, she entered the information into some database, confirmed again the names of my parents (I still fail to see what's so peculiar about them), complained about the computer, and printed the certificates. Then, using the set of keys in her waist bag, she opened some closet in which there were some other keys that would allow her to unlock the machine that puts some special stamps on the certificates. She put the stamps and that was it.

Smiling, she charged me 7 euros (!) and I thought immediately about this Portuguese thing of ripping off foreigners. Not so frequent, I must admit. The classic example is taxis, but in a country where a coffee costs 50 cents, I am sure that paying 7 euros for two identical public documents is an abuse. However, I payed without complaining: at the end, I wasn't able to complain anyway, I obtained what I wanted --and immediately in the same day-- using the very limited Portuguese I have. So I was very satisfied. This is what little victories are about.